


these clocks are at a standstill

by eversall



Series: bright blue skies [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon route spoilers, Background Relationships, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, i just have a lot of feelings about how hard byleth tries okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eversall/pseuds/eversall
Summary: She walks toward him slowly, purposefully. He takes a step back, and then holds still as she touches his shoulder, and then slowly brushes his bangs out of his face.“Weakness is what’s saving you right now,” she says quietly. Dimitri doesn’t say anything back, but he listens, and he stands there until she leaves, and maybe that’s all she can ask of him right now..
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: bright blue skies [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609528
Comments: 28
Kudos: 368





	these clocks are at a standstill

**Author's Note:**

> what UP it's been like three months so true to form, it's time to update this series!!!  
> i started writing this almost exactly the same time i wrote the sylvix part of this series, but i tossed it aside for a while because i didn't really like it, and then over the last two (??) months i've been slowly rewriting it...and yet, it's still so short!! whatever. i have a lot of feelings about byleth and what the timeskip and all her divine powers must have done to her.
> 
> title taken from whywhywhy by mister wives.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Dimitri says to her before they attack the bandits. She’s tired, disoriented from being told she’s missed five years of her life, but even she doesn’t miss what he’s trying to say, half loathing himself and half loathing her.

“There’s not much I can do now to change that,” she says past the lump in her throat, instead of everything she _can’t_ say. Five years, down the drain, she thinks bitterly. She grips her sword tighter.

She always knew she wasn’t cut out for anything but killing, anyway. What was she playing at, being a professor? Here is where she belongs, as she slinks around the corners of the ruins, here – by the side of the man she failed to protect, ready to murder people she can’t say for certain deserve to be murdered. Here, her hands stained with blood, should be where she’d always stayed, instead of daring to think she could grow something good.

.

What seems to her like just a few months ago, Dimitri had looked at her with a gentle smile on his face, teasing her about spending forever together. Her heart would have been traitorously thundering in her chest if it had beat at all; instead, she’d flushed and been silent for a second too long, watching his expression transform into one of awe.

He’d never been stupid, and it wouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out why she’d thought the teasing was cruel. He’d apologized, voice quiet and sincere, and she’d taken it in stride, because she isn’t sure that loving a prince is ever the right thing to do. That isn’t – that _can’t_ be her future, because she’s seen enough of these tragedies play out.

But in the middle of a story about Fhirdiad, he’d brushed the back of her hand with his, the touch so light and gentle that she’d thought she’d imagined it, and then when she’d seen him stutter and blush out of the corner of her eyes, and with the moonlight and stars and his eyes like _that_ – she’d brushed his hand back, longing rising in her like a wave rushing to the shore. He’d hooked his pinky around hers, slowly, so slowly, and she’d known that neither of them were sure of anything but the other.

The world had fallen apart around them, but that gentle touch from the hands of a man who crushed most delicate things – how was she supposed to forget that?

.

She doesn’t sleep, and wanders the monastery most nights – but then again, most of them do. She sees nearly all of her former students when she pads around, quiet as possible. Felix, up on the roof, with Sylvain plastered to his side; Ingrid and Ashe, slowly rebuilding the pegasus stables; Mercedes and Annette tossing magical sparks back and forth, laughing in a way they never do with anyone else.

And, when she’s feeling like she wants to hurt herself, just a little - Dimitri, in the cathedral, lurking in the shadows of the saints and muttering to himself. Or sitting on the pews, body bent over in half like a broken man as he talks to the air. Or sometimes, like today, kneeling in front of the broken remains of the prayer area and staring silently up at the moonlight streaming through the hole in the roof.

His watchful gaze, half-blinded yet still so sharp, swings around to look at her as she approaches him. Her boots echo loudly, louder than she’d like, but grace has never been her forte.

“What do you want?” Dimitri asks, his voice low and angry as ever.

“To see you,” she says. “I couldn’t sleep.” Her tone is so _normal_ , as if this is all just another night at the monastery, like he’ll offer her tea for her insomnia and she’ll accept and they’ll both spend the night drinking tea and pretending not to be looking at each other.

“Why would you want to see me?”

She comes and stands next to him, near his good eye, weighing her chances at getting him to stand. Knowing him, he’s been in this position for hours, and his knees are bruised. Will it matter? He walks each self-inflicted injury off as if it never matters, as if the blood and bruises that adorn his new body are ink he needs to keep permanent. She hates looking at it, hates another reminder of how terrible she is at taking care of the only people she was ever asked to watch over. 

Dedue is _dead_ , and she hasn’t been able to honor the one thing he’d wanted. She can’t protect Dimitri - not like this, not from himself, not from _her_ , because she can’t save anyone here. She’s always too late.

“Because it’s you,” she says quietly, instead of the raging screams that threaten to tear their way out of her. “Because I’m lonely.”

He snorts. “Then you are fortunate,” he tells her, tilting his head back and watching her lazily through a half-lidded eye, “that the dead do not fill your every waking step with their laments.”

She crouches down by him, kneels and winces as her knee brace digs into her flesh. “The dead are no substitute for conversation, Dimitri. Wouldn’t you rather – “

“No,” he says shortly. “Go away. I know what you’re trying to do. Your voice cannot silence them.”

She swallows, her hands curling into fists as she clenches her fingers and tries to push the anger down, tries to shove the frustration back. He notices, his gaze flicking to her knuckles and back, and she sees the corners of his mouth lift in an insolent, bitter smile.

“Do I make you angry,” he asks, and there is a pause as he sees right through her, right through every bit of fear and misery and knows the lonely girl she is underneath that all, and still he drives the knife further because he _can_ , “ _Byleth_?”

The way he _says_ it, rolling her given name around on his tongue, knowing that once she had thrilled to hear it. She still does, still hates herself for the way her traitorous, silent heart leaps in her chest at how vulnerable it is to hear him say her name.

 _Inhale, exhale_. She will not become who he wants her to be. She won’t give him the satisfaction.

“I won’t hate you,” she says finally. She can’t help the way her voice shakes when she repeats it, adds her own twisting knife to it in the only way she knows how, “I cannot hate you, Dimitri.”

His face falls for a split second, and he is young and terrified and looking at her like she holds the thread of his fate. The echo of the man that wanted to hold her hand shines through, and he stands abruptly, his armor clanking noisily. He wants to get away from her.

At least she got him to get off his knees, she thinks hysterically as she begins to stand. Her own aching knee protests, and when she leans her weight on the leg with the brace it gives way under her and her breath catches as she begins to fall, only to be caught by a gentle grip on her shoulder.

And when she looks back, there is Dimitri, as always, refusing to meet her eye and turning away like it pains him, but his grip still steady and solid.

 _Stop saving me_ , she wants to scream. _Hate me. Somebody, hate me._

.

They still look to her for all the answers. She’s younger than nearly all of them now and she despairs; what does she know of the world? What does she know of gauntlets and lances and magic?

“Professor,” Mercedes glides up to her, smile so sweet and sincere, “can you explain this rune here to me? I’m afraid I’m not quite remembering what it means, especially in this context.”

They’re in the cardinals’ room, their makeshift war council table, where they still default to studying and learning at the beginning of the week – only now, they insist they’re doing _drills_ , and there are glaring absences to her left and right where Dimitri and Dedue should have been, seats that no one can bring themselves to take. She sits by herself at the head, because Rhea left this to her, made her some sort of martyr for people that she definitely doesn’t deserve, people a thousand times better than her, people like Mercedes.

She beckons the other woman over and frowns over the scrawled text on the parchment. “It looks like you may have copied it wrong. It’s lesser restoration, but you would never be able to combine it with the other three incantations. It’s unbalanced.”

Mercedes takes the paper back, hums thoughtfully over it, and nods. “Do you think it should have been a fortification instead? I copied it out of a waterlogged book, and I’m afraid the page I took it from is destroyed.”

Byleth flounders. What _should_ it be? How would she know? Mercedes has been healing for five years; the last thing _Byleth_ learned of white magic was a frantically late night spent studying offensive white magic until her eyes ached. She isn’t smart. She isn’t cut out for this.

“Fortification can’t be used like that either, let me see,” Annette pipes up suddenly from behind, frowning over Mercedes shoulder. “Ah!” She scribbles something down with her own pen, and Mercedes’ face clears up, and Byleth tries her best not to choke on the sense of failure washing over her.

Instead, she turns back to her own book on Almyran swordship, blinking and trying desperately to read a single line. Her mind is a chorus of voices telling her she’s dead weight to her former students, no good for anything but turning back time when they need it – and they wouldn’t need it half the time if she wasn’t so careless, so reckless with her battle plans.

There’s a soft touch on her shoulder, and she blinks to see Mercedes again.

“I need a break,” Mercedes says softly. “Will you come have a cup of tea with me?”

She’d like to refuse because she’s done nothing of use this morning and really shouldn’t take a break until she absorbs _something_ worth sharing with Felix for their one-on-one tomorrow, but she’s already failed Mercedes once, so she nods and stands up. They walk outside quietly, slowly, savoring the moment of peace and stillness.

“Prof – Byleth,” Mercedes says, catching herself at the last second from calling her the one thing Byleth doesn’t want them to anymore, and Byleth turns. “You seemed upset back there.”

There’s a furrow in Mercedes brow, and Byleth hates to see her like this. “No,” she hastens to reassure the other woman, “no, I was fine. I promise.”

“Oh my,” Mercedes says, shaking her head, “that sounded like a lie if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Mercedes – “ Byleth tries, desperately, but Mercedes stops walking in the middle of the entrance hall and grabs Byleth’s hand with both of her own.

“You _must_ stop walking around like every problem is somehow your fault,” Mercedes tells her, voice so earnest that Byleth feels tears immediately threatening to spill. “We are all who we are because of you. Please, Byleth. We hate seeing you like this.”

She feels so weak in the face of Mercedes’ faith. “I lost five years,” she whispers. “I haven’t made up for that yet, Mercedes.”

Mercedes shakes her head, veil shimmering. “No. You made up for it the instant you kept your promise and showed up alive.”

“It isn’t that simple – “

“Why not?” Mercedes asks, and Byleth has no answer for that. “Why isn’t it as simple as staying alive?”

.

Dimitri is not her fault. She wishes he was, because then it would be so much easier to let him go. The truth of the matter is that monster or not, she stays by his side because of him, as he is, as he always was, and the guilt and shame and anger have never played a part in it. Perhaps, if she experienced feelings normally, they would, but she’s holding onto something deeper than all of that.

“What do you want me to say?” she finally snaps back at him one day. “That it’s hard to love you like this? That it’s hard to love a monster? Well, fine. It _is_ hard. It takes everything in me to keep doing it. But why should that mean I have to stop? Why should _you_ decide that my love needs to be easy?”

He reels back like he’s been slapped, and the lines on his face grow deeper and deeper. “Why would you continue to torture yourself like that?” he snaps back. “Are you waiting in the hopes that I will become the Dimitri you once knew? Do you think loving hard enough will _change_ anything?”

She’s so angry she’s shaking it with it, her fingers twitching as she considers slapping him, just once. How easy it is to be furious, she thinks. How easy it is to rage at the beast that he’s become, and how difficult it is to walk the path she's chosen instead. 

“It will. It did,” she says bitterly. “It changed _me_.”

Hope. She is still, despite everything, holding on to hope.

.

Her parents’ tombstone is cracked down the middle, somehow, but she hasn’t bothered to fix it. Her father wouldn’t have cared, and her mother – well she’s never known what her mother would have wanted, besides flowers.

She carefully lays violets down and thinks about living together, dying together. How did her father do it? How did he go twenty years without the love of his life, with nothing but a daughter that found killing so easy and stared so blankly? A girl who never cried, who rarely laughed, who had turbulent dreams and had, unknowingly, stripped her father of his previous life and friends?

She sinks to her knees in front of the grave and suddenly, fiercely, hates her mother for leaving her like this. For _trusting_ her to Rhea, for thinking that a life without her mother would be a life worth living at all.

“Why would you _do_ this to me?” she demands, and as if to answer the heavens open and rain begins to pour, a steady deluge that soaks her cape quickly. She lets it drown her, tilts her face back and closes her eyes and imagines the rain consuming her and tearing her apart. _Anything_ , she thinks, _anything must be better than this half-living that war has given me_.

Abruptly, the rain on her face stops, and she opens her eyes to see a dark shape looming above her. Dimitri, already half-soaked himself, is frowning as he looks down. His shoulders are wide enough to shield her from the downpour, and she hates herself a little for noticing such a tiny, worthless detail.

“I need to speak with everyone about our approach to Gronder Field,” he says. She laughs, bitter.

“Speak with everyone, then. You know I’ll do whatever you want to do,” she replies, looking back at the grave. She is standing on her mother’s bones, she thinks. How morbid. How appropriate for the Ashen Demon.

“You can’t stay here,” Dimitri objects. She frowns and looks back at him, but he gazes back down at her, his cold stare unwavering. “No one will start the meeting without you.”

As if her voice is the one that matters. As if everyone isn’t following the mad prince blindly. As if they don’t all know that she’s inexplicably tied to him, for better or for worse.

There’s a touch to her shoulder, gentle, and a deeper voice. “Byleth. It would be unwise to linger outside in such inclement weather. Please, come with us to the meeting.”

Dedue helps her up, drapes his cloak around her trembling form and draws the hood up for her. She won’t refuse Dedue, not when looking at him reminds her that there are good things left in the world, people that should hate her and yet still look to her with unshakeable belief. Not when he’s come back from the dead for them like this.

“Byleth,” he says, his voice low as Dimitri whirls around and stalks off, his expression stiff and angry in the second he glanced at her, “His Highness only called the meeting when he saw you standing out in the rain. He seemed to think a meeting would be the only thing to deter you from continuing to get soaked. The method is wanting, but I agree with the intentions.”

She feels the way the tears finally push out of her eyes, and she almost wants to fling the hood of Dedue’s cloak off so no one can see, so the rain can wash away everything about this war that rests like a sharp ache inside of her.

“Dedue,” she says instead, “I have missed you, my friend.” It isn't the first time she's saying it, but she can't help herself. 

She can feel his low, quiet chuckle. “And I, you,” he says. “Five years is a long time. Please do not disappear like that again.”

The ache intensifies. Does everyone look at her the way she looks at Dedue? Willing to forgive any and all flaws because she _came back, against all odds she came back and she is here_ –

“I never wanted to leave,” she says as they walk through the rain, following Dimitri. “I – if I had known – “

“Forgive me. I believe you misunderstood what I meant to say,” Dedue says plainly. “Five years is a long time, but it is nothing compared to what would have happened if you had been dead. His Highness’ life would have been forfeit, then. “

“Yes,” she says, and she wants to laugh but refrains because Dedue doesn’t deserve that kind of callousness, “because the ghost he walks around like now is so much better – “

“He is healing,” Dedue promises. “And he is no ghost. Is that not what we are trying to teach him? That the living are here, and present?”

 _Oh_ , she thinks, watching Dimitri’s bulky shoulders. _He is real_ . _He is alive_.

.

Her flowers are the one thing that still bloom beneath her touch, leaves and buds arching toward the sunlight and unfurling in glimmering colors. These are the flowers that wooed so many of the Empire and Alliance students to her side, the plants that have saved lives.

“You are wonderful,” she tells them seriously, because she gives credit where credit is due. There’s the sound of a branch cracking behind her, and she whirls to see Dimitri, looking at her as blankly as ever.

“You weren’t in the cardinals’ room today with everyone else,” he says.

She brushes her hands off and stands up. “I was doing drills outside all day, and then helping with food preparations. I didn’t have time.”

His gaze is unflinching. “We march to Gronder tomorrow.”

“Are you asking me if I’m prepared?”

He tilts his head. “You seemed weak when you cut down Lorenz at the bridge. There is no place for weakness in revenge.”

She swallows, thinks of how she knocked Lorenz over the head and then sent Ashe in with a vulnerary to heal the other man and send him on his way. All the things Dimitri doesn’t know – that Dedue brings Mercedes in to heal Dimitri during the rare times he sleeps, that Felix has been polishing and maintaining Dimitri’s weapons, that Ingrid has been permanently assigned to guarding Dimitri as he rages on the battlefield. That they’ve all banded together, protecting their king – their _friend_ in the only way they know how.

She thinks of the way he looks when he looks at her, still lost, still afraid. How he glares when others touch her but doesn’t say a word. How he keeps pushing her away, keeps asking her to hate him.

She walks toward him slowly, purposefully. He takes a step back, and then holds still as she touches his shoulder, and then slowly brushes his bangs out of his face.

“Weakness is what’s saving you right now,” she says quietly. Dimitri doesn’t say anything back, but he listens, and he stands there until she leaves, and maybe that’s all she can ask of him right now. 

.

She’s too late at Gronder Field. Her mind is numb with the image of Leonie falling to Dimitri’s blade, a careless oversight on her part. She hadn’t thought Claude would send his troops in _behind_ them, she’d - 

The sound of Claude’s scream across the battlefield, over and over as she pushed back time and kept failing to save Leonie, is still ringing in her ears. She doesn’t know what try she’s on when she gets it right and finally intercepts Leonie on her own, sending her away; she just knows that her entire body is trembling with the effort and the scream is still ringing in her ears like a distant bell, tolling for her death.

But she sees Rodrigue falling at the edge of her vision, and she _pushes_ past the exhaustion and the strain on her body – she reaches, deep inside her, and forces time back, once, twice, thrice, and watches with a sinking horror as nothing happens, her power failing her at the time she needs it most. 

Maybe it’s a curse. Maybe it’s her hubris, her doomed pride. Maybe it’s the absence of a childish voice urging her to _try just a little more, you’re almost there, these children need our protection_! Maybe, maybe, maybe - 

Maybe all it is is that she is not fast enough. She is _never_ fast enough. She is never _enough_.

But she wants to be, she thinks as she runs as fast as she can to him as he crumples over a dead body. She _wants_ to be enough, she _wants_ to be the person he thinks he sees when he looks at her, good and kind and trying to save the world, despite the blood on her hands.

And later, when he collapses in the rain, she catches him and holds him and tells the screaming voices in her head firmly that she is enough. She is enough.

.

In the morning, she brews a cup of chamomile tea in the kitchen and stares at it long enough that it goes cold. Ashe comes in, sees her staring, and does a little bit of his own staring until he asks, hesitantly, “Are you...okay?” 

He immediately cringes. “I’m sorry, I know that’s a stupid question.”

She looks up, and past the lump in her throat and the heaviness in her bones she can see that Ashe’s eyes are red-rimmed and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. 

“I’m…” she trails off. “Ashe, are _you_ okay?” 

“Oh!” He raises his hands to his eyes and swipes self-consciously at the dark circles under them, then turns away and busies himself with pulling a pot out. “Yes, of course, I’m fine.” 

He’s clearly lying, but she doesn’t quite know what for. Caught up as she is in her own thoughts, she’s been neglecting her friends; she feels the guilt and regret swirl even louder in her mind as she thinks about the strained, tense way Ashe sometimes stares at Dedue. 

“Ashe,” she says hesitantly. “You - perhaps you should go back to bed. I can take this morning shift from you.” 

There’s a beat of silence as Ashe stares at the tea selection, and then he seems to shake himself out of some reverie as he says, “No, that’s quite alright. It’s the only…” he trails off quietly. “Never mind. How is his Highness?” 

Byleth slowly begins creating a small fire on her fingertips, practicing her control and trying to get the tea warm without shattering the porcelain. “He’s...resting. He’s speaking with Dedue right now.” 

“Oh,” Ashe says when he hears Dedue’s name, and his shoulders seem to slump inward. In that moment, with the early morning light streaming in, she catches a glimpse of a deep and painful yearning etched across Ashe’s face. He looks so small and defeated like this, and so painfully unlike himself that it makes Byleth flash back to her own misery, and to the quiet, aching longing she feels like she’s been carrying for an eternity. 

“Ashe,” Byleth says, and he shakes his head. 

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” he mutters, scrubbing his hands across his face. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s - it’s not nothing, is it?” she asks quietly. “Dedue won’t miss a morning shift in the kitchen with you, you know that.” 

“I _don’t_ know that,” Ashe snaps, and then he reels back and looks horrified. “I - I’m - I’m so sorry - “

Byleth is shaking her head before he even begins to apologize, “No, it’s okay, it’s - “

“ - it’s not okay, that was incredibly rude of me - “

“Ashe, you - “

“I don’t know what’s come over me lately, it’s like I - “

“Ashe!” 

Byleth grabs his arms, squeezing tightly and steadying his increasingly frantic stream of words. He looks like he’s going to burst into tears, and she’s panicked suddenly, thinking that if she sees Ashe - sweet, steady, kind Ashe - start crying, she might start sobbing too, and then she might never stop. 

“It’s okay,” she murmurs, and then she slowly, hesitantly, enfolds him in a hug. “I get it.”

Ashe crumples into her, his forehead resting on her cloaked shoulder as he clenches his fingers in her sleeves and whispers, “Why do I feel like this? Dedue is my _friend_. Why isn’t that enough for me?” 

Byleth swallows past the lump in her throat and thinks about the way Dimitri had held her hand in the rain. He’d been looking right at her, so whole, so present, and she’d still felt like he hadn’t been seeing her, but the echo of everything he’d done in the past six years. She gets it, she thinks. 

“I don’t think,” she says haltingly, “that it’s that bad. To want to be...seen.” 

“I’m jealous of my _king_ ,” Ashe moans, his voice muffled. “I shouldn’t be as selfish as to want to compete for attention with _that_.” 

Byleth laughs, surprised. “Dimitri. He’s just Dimitri, to us. And it’s - you’re jealous of a man who means a lot to Dedue. But…”

“But?” 

Byleth draws back from the hug and steps back, feeling incredibly fond of Ashe as she straightens his coat out. “But you’re important too,” she tells him. “You’re allowed to be upset, and angry, and jealous. I’ve...learned that,” she says, thinking of the months she spent chasing after a wraith of a man.

She spies a movement on the far side of the dining hall, and her heart feels light. “Besides,” she says as Dedue ducks into the hall, his pace quickening when he sees Ashe, “it seems to me like he’s quite clear on what his attention is on, in his own way.” 

Ashe turns to follow her gaze, and then he flushes bright red and says, “Dedue!” in a way that must mean _something_ to Dedue, because he calls back “Ashe,” and she doesn’t understand the secret language that’s passing between them but she can feel that it’s important. 

She slips away, snagging Ashe’s unmade cup of tea and an extra packet of chamomile leaves, and makes the trek back to Dimitri’s quarters. As she climbs the stairs, her bad knee twinges with pain and she barely notices it, caught up in thinking about the intimacy of _knowing_ someone, without having to say anything; and then she thinks about a wild, feral Dimitri, stopping her from falling on her bad knee, and her heart nearly gives out.

 _What is your secret language_ , she wants to ask, but then Dimitri opens his door for her, eyes red-rimmed and looking miserable. 

“Byleth,” he says, his voice still rough, “you’re...still here.” 

She raises an eyebrow, and hands over a cup of tea as she steps into his room, sweeping her gaze over his gaunt, haggard form. He’s out of his armor and coat, for the first time in what feels like forever. He still has a tinge of anger and restless energy to him, but he looks - like the Dimitri she knew, mixed with a new, angrier, guilty part of him that she’s learned to look at now. It’s enough for her, at least, to see the gentle way he cradles the cup of tea. 

“You still like chamomile,” he mutters. 

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought that his taste, lacking as it is, might have changed. She’s still - remembering how things were, years ago. “I apologize. Do you not like it now? I can - “

“No, no.” Dimitri shakes his head. “You still like chamomile. So do I.” 

She’s inexplicably touched. He pulls out a chair for her, and she sits, crossing her legs and biting her lip as she looks at the mess scattered around the room. Dimitri perches on the edge of his bed, staring into the steam rising up from the cup. 

“I do not know...how to do this,” he says softly, quietly at one point, when they’ve both nearly finished their tea. Byleth looks up, her heart clenching at the timid edge to the words. He’s unfairly beautiful like this, the long, lean lines of his body softened by his slumped shoulders and the quietness of the morning around them. “How can I face everyone again?” 

“I...the same way I did,” she says, subdued. He looks at her then, and the sight of the eyepatch hits her all over again. Things have changed since she met him, in a way so immense that she can barely breathe through it sometimes. “One day at a time. You face them because you have to, because they deserve it from you.” 

She stands up and moves forward, taking the cup from him; their fingers brush, and they both freeze. He stares at her hand, hovering over his, for a long moment. 

“Even if I don’t deserve it?” he asks. 

Hesitantly, she brushes her thumb across the rough, broad span of the back of his hand. “Especially then,” she says. “ _Especially_ then.”

.

The night that they spend in Derdriu after defending it - after being _given_ it, much to Dimitri’s eternal chagrin and Lorenz’s irritated confusion - Byleth feels uneasy. There’s a cold kind of terror gripping her heart that she hasn’t felt in a long time, a nameless uncertainty about war and death. 

The Alliance permanently changing - _falling_ \- is an uncomfortable thought. Oh sure, when Dimitri gets things sorted out the primary control of it will probably go back to someone from the Leicester Alliance in the first place - but it’s a change too big for Byleth to be comfortable with. She’s caught up in something that’s shaping history, and she feels helpless at the way it’s happening. 

Claude puts them all up in opulent housing by the port, but Byleth slips away from their communal dinner and goes up to the roof, trying to breathe through the panic. She _sees_ the wild light in Claude’s eyes, and knows that he’ll be gone at sunrise. She won’t stop him. But she also doesn’t know how to reconcile the thought that his path has diverged from theirs; not when she truly thought they would all face Edelgard down together.

It is, surprisingly, Hilda that finds her like that. Byleth looks up, eyebrow raised, and Hilda makes a face and sways slightly as she cautiously climbs out onto the roof with her. 

“Don’t look at me like that, Professor,” Hilda whines. 

“Don’t call me that,” Byleth says, fond and exasperated. “You’re older than me.” 

“But you carry the title so well.” 

Byleth shakes her head. “I’d make you write lines if I still could.”

“Lies and slander!” Hilda giggles at that, light and airy. “You were never the type to assign lines.” 

“And you were never the type to come out to follow someone out onto a roof,” Byleth says, gesturing. “And yet, here we are.” 

“Hm.” Hilda falls uncharacteristically quiet at that. Byleth waits it out, patiently, listening to the sound of waves lapping against the shore. The stars here are brighter - or maybe that’s just her imagination. They certainly feel more infinite, against the backdrop of the never ending sea. “Can I ask you something, Prof?” 

A small laugh leaves her mouth before she can help herself; at Hilda’s affronted look, she hastens to say, “Only if you call me Byleth.” 

“Ugh, that’s _weird_.”

“The others have no problem with it.” 

“That’s ‘cause the Blue Lions are so damn _noble_. I can’t be.” 

The last part is said with more bitterness than Hilda usually contains on any given day, and it’s enough for Byleth’s smile to drop and her gaze to focus solely on Hilda’s anxious expression. “What’s wrong?” 

“I - I leave with Claude for Almyra tomorrow, you know,” Hilda says all at once, the words rushing out. Byleth closes her eyes briefly. _Change_ ; it’s unmooring and unsettling. 

“I know,” she finally replies, opening her eyes and smiling wistfully. “The both of you will be so far away. It will be strange not to be fighting the same battles.” 

“I’m hoping we’re back by the time they crown his Highness,” Hilda says matter-of-factly. There’s no _if_ in the question, and Byleth is touched by the faith. “But I...know that’ll be a long time anyway.” 

“Perhaps,” Byleth says quietly. There’s a faint shout as a ship approaches the harbor, men and women still desperately conducting business as the war drags on. How horribly normal. 

“Do you think it would be...right of me...to ask Marianne to wait for me?” Her question, when it comes, is hesitant. There’s no bravado in her voice, none of the usual bluster or saccharine sweetness. Instead, Hilda looks older than ever as she draws her knees up to her chest and looks out over the cliffs. 

Byleth looks down at her hands in her lap. “Why are you asking me?” she asks, though she thinks she might know the answer.

“You’re my teacher,” Hilda says, voice careful. “Can’t I want your advice?” 

“ _Hilda_ ,” Byleth says, surprising to hear the way her own voice comes out, thick with a lifetime of regret. “Don’t lie to me.” 

She hears Hilda sigh. There’s another prolonged silence, which Byleth is good at, but Hilda is not. People like Hilda - people like Sylvain, and Claude, people who all play elaborate games of cat-and-mouse with their personalities - they’re always the people who know exactly when and how they’re hurting others. She can feel the reluctance in the air between them, the unspoken bitterness of Hilda asking her once formidable professor something as tragic as this. 

“I’m not saying it’s the same,” Hilda says, her voice so low that Byleth barely hears it. “But you waited for his Highness. You are kind, and you are good, and you waited for someone who is not.” 

The words hit her like a lightning bolt, slamming into her chest and leaving her feeling like she’s suffocating. Her hands clench in her lap, knuckles going white as she feels the anger and desperation bleed off her in waves. 

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Byleth finally manages to get out through gritted teeth. 

“Which part?” 

Her breath catches in her throat. “The part about being good and kind. I’m not Marianne, Hilda. I was a mercenary. I killed people. That was my life, and that continues to be my life.” 

A beat of silence, and the ocean has never sounded louder in her life. “Don’t be stupid,” Hilda snaps. 

“I’m not - “

“Your old students might let you self-wallow like this, but I won’t. Everything you did, you had to, and you make up for it a hundred times over with all the kindness and patience you put back into the world,” Hilda’s tone is so angry that Byleth actually turns to look at her. Her eyebrows are slanted downward, dangerously, and there’s clear impatience and irritation. 

Byleth is - uncomfortable. She hasn’t experienced being snapped at in a long time, not since Dimitri. And that was always - tinged with an edge of sadness that made it not quite real. This, this actual anger and willingness to push back, she hasn’t had since her father. _Fuck_ , she thinks, and wills herself not to cry. 

“Maybe this is answer enough,” Hilda says irritably, sighing. “Marianne probably feels the same way. Like she’s still some kind of monster, even though no one is telling her that but herself. Saints, how do people like you and her trick yourself into thinking these things?” 

Byleth holds her hand up to stem the tides of Hilda’s anger before it gets too big to pull back. “You’ve said your piece, Hilda. Let me say mine.” 

Hilda crosses her arms and scowls mutinously, but she shuts her mouth. Byleth takes a moment to collect her thoughts, thinking about love and loss and two tombstones at Garrag Mach, side by side, her mother waiting in death and her father waiting in life. But always, always waiting. 

“You asked if it’s right to ask Marianne to wait for you,” she says finally, tracing her fingers around and around her knee brace. “I think that it would be crueler not to ask her. People like me and her...we’re always waiting, for some moment where we feel less terrible. And when we wait, instead, for people - for promises - the world seems just a bit brighter.”

That’s what it is, she thinks. It’s a better future, on the horizon. It’s the promise of tomorrow. It’s hope, hope in other people, because hope in herself is so hard to come by.

Hilda sighs. “You know, I look up to you so much,” she mumbles. “You believed in us, in all of us. But I think I forget sometimes that you’re just like us too. I - thank you, Byleth.” 

Byleth smiles and gently bumps shoulders with Hilda. “I’m going to miss you and Claude,” she says quietly. 

“Me too,” Hilda says, and then she throws her arm around Byleth and they sit there and spend a precious few minutes of what little time Hilda has before leaving just sitting together, staring at the silvery-blue ocean, and listening to the sounds of the ocean as they try to forget about the war raging outside the walls.

.

Dimitri finds her when they take back Fhirdiad, the noises of the party swelling as he opens the door. She turns back and gives him a surprised smile.

“I didn’t think you’d be able to escape the festivities like that,” she says. “You are, after all, the man of the hour. Your Majesty,” she adds as an afterthought, wondering if she should bow. He makes a face at the honorific.

“Please don’t,” he says quietly. “You will never be anything but my equal.” He moves forward to stand beside her on the small balcony she’s commandeered for herself. His armor is off, though his cape isn’t, and yet he seems as large as ever. Five years has changed him in endless ways, she thinks.

“Dimitri, then,” she says, and relishes the way his cheeks flush pink at that.

“I deserve worse names,” he says instead, his tone turning dark.

She nudges his shoulder. “None of that right now,” she tells him, and when it looks like he’s about to open his mouth to contest her she drops her voice and says “ _Please_.”

There is silence for a long, long time. Fhirdiad is colder than she expected, and she shivers absently as she stares at the twinkling stars.

“You’re cold,” Dimitri says suddenly, and she turns to see him frowning. “Here, my cloak – “

“That fur monstrosity,” she says quickly, bringing a hand up, “is _much_ too heavy for _my_ shoulders, no thank you – “

His eyes widen in surprise for a second before he starts laughing, one hand coming up to cover his mouth.

“How long have you been waiting to tell me that?” he asks.

“Since I woke up,” she says truthfully, and he laughs harder, his cheer infectious. This is Dimitri too, she has to remember, this and the dark part. All of it, wrapped together, in the same way that the parts of herself she spends nights loathing are intertwined with the parts of herself that are confident and secure.

“Well,” Dimitri says, and then he holds his hand out, looking unsure. “I won’t give you my cloak, then. But it is warmer, and large enough for two people. I will carry the weight of my hideous coat, if you will stand in its warmth with me.”

Is he talking about more than his coat? She doesn’t know, but she finds herself breathless anyway at the way he looks at her. Here, with the celebration still raging strong and the feeling of victory thrumming through her veins, it’s easy to forget the past few months of darkness. Here, it’s easy to take his hand and step into the unfamiliar heat of his embrace.

He sighs as she leans into him, his arms circling her waist. It _is_ warmer, immediately, and it has almost nothing to do with the fur covering both of them and entirely to do with the way she can feel the thrum of Dimitri's heart racing under her hand as she places it on his chest, listening. 

"You know," she says quietly, "I don't have a heartbeat." 

He smiles again, but the smile drops when he realizes she's being serious. 

"You're - how can that be?" he asks. One of his arms drops from her waist, and he raises it and then stops, silently asking for permission. She takes her hand off his chest and guides him to place his hand over the swell of her breast, heat pooling in her stomach at the way a red flush crawls up Dimitri's neck and he inhales sharply. 

"I have a pulse," she says softly, "but no heartbeat. A side-effect, I think, of the power of the goddess in me." 

He's silent for a while, his brow furrowed. "It seems you are, as always, full of surprises." He looks back at her, but doesn't take his hand away, his calluses rough against her skin. 

Her hand is still covering his, and she squeezes his hand once, twice. It doesn't seem so long ago that she wanted for nothing more than to reach over and hold his hand; now here he is, and here she is, and she can feel the chasm of five years between them acutely. 

"I wanted to ask something of you," she tells him. 

He finally takes his hand off her chest, only to turn it over and tangle their fingers together. "Anything."

She brings her other hand up and tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, then touches his eyepatch. 

"I want to see you without this," she says. His grip on her hand tightens briefly, almost painful, before he lets go and reaches back, untying the black string and letting the patch fall from his face. 

Her breath catches. His scarred eyelid covers almost the entire mangled eye, a hint of blue peeking through. The flesh around it is twisted beyond recognition, looking painful even after all this time. 

"Can I - " she begins to ask, but he cuts her off. 

"You can do whatever you like," he tells her. "You never have to ask."

She brings a trembling hand up and ghosts her finger along the edge of his eyebrow, right above where the scarring starts. "I will always ask," she says absently. "Dimitri, how did you survive this?" 

His gaze is downcast. "I had one elixir left," he says. "It stopped me from dying from blood loss and infection."

She swallows hard, her finger hovering over the mangled eyelid. Dimitri swallows too, his throat bobbing, and it feels to her as if the whole world holds its breath when she finally touches the scar. "It must have hurt," she says thickly, "so much."

His hand comes up to circle her wrist, hanging on as he closes his eyes, both injured and uninjured. "I thought it was divine punishment," he whispers, "for letting you die." 

She wants to rage against that, contest it, demand that he take it back. But she knows something about guilt, about the weight of the past and the retribution that memories can exact. There is nothing she can say to erase that pain. 

“Dimitri,” she whispers back instead, and he still reacts like she’s given him something precious when she says his name; he opens his eyes and stares at her with unabashed awe. “I’m sorry.” 

"Don't be," his voice is soft but unyielding, and there's something in it that has her melting towards him, pressing closer and letting her head fall forward on his chest. She closes her eyes. "Byleth."

"I'm sorry," she says again, and her breath catches as her voice breaks, and she thinks of how much it would have hurt to go half-blind, all alone, and suddenly she's crying, tears streaming down her face. She thinks of the piles of rotting corpses they cleared away in Garrag Mach, and Rodrigues slain body, and a goddess that gave up _everything_. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm - " 

"No," Dimitri says, voice distraught, and his arms go around her and pull her even closer and she's blanketed by his warmth and his strength but still the apologies fall out of her mouth uncontrollably as her fingers tremble, tangled up in Dimitri’s soft linen shirt. She wants to disappear. She wants to go back to sleep, go back five years, go back to those bright, sunlit months where she hadn’t killed everything she’d ever touched.

“Byleth,” Dimitri says again, and then she feels it; the soft, whispered kiss against the top of her head, lingering and painfully gentle. “Look at me.” 

She looks up. She cannot deny him anything, just like he cannot deny _her_ anything. She looks up and sees his mangled eye and his good eye, and she has the unhelpful thought that he’s still the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, and he tells her, “It’s okay now. I’m here. _You’re_ here.” 

She doesn’t know how to tell him that she doesn’t think she deserves to be.

.

The tension that settles over the monastery as they prepare for Enbarr has a maddening kind of energy to it; half of the troops are restless with the need to fight, and the other half look one step away from digging their own graves and burying themselves in their sure misery that they might die. 

Byleth can’t blame them, but it begins to get under her skin. Everywhere she goes, people stare now; they think she’s performed two miracles, coming back from the dead and bringing the king back from a fate worse than death, and they’re waiting on her to pull out a third. But she’s never done anything like that. How can she explain to these soldiers that she’s a mercenary, just like them? A killer, who can’t touch anything without it being ruined?

How can she explain that her entire life feels like she’s trying to make amends for the blood on her hands?

At one point she escapes to a secluded corner of the knight’s hall and starts to relentlessly practice her swordwork on a training dummy, whirling and parrying and slicing until her hands ache. She’s breathing hard, her hair flying in her face, and she doesn’t notice she has an audience until she drops her sword, fingers trembling, and there’s suddenly a cool hand wrapping around her wrist. 

“You - !” she cuts herself off as she looks up, wide-eyed, into Dimitri’s frowning, stern face. His hands are gentle as they quickly assess her bruised knuckles and the torn, bleeding calluses on her palms, and she’s struck dumb by the contrast of her blood smearing along his fingers. 

“Byleth,” he says softly, “no need to work yourself into such a state.” 

She pulls her hands back, out of his grasp, feeling unmoored as she stares into his surprised gaze. The restless feeling of inadequacy in her is joined by the curling anticipation of the way he stands before her, tall and purposeful. She flexes her fingers, suddenly not willing to say anything at all. 

His face clears, and he ruefully pushes his hand through his hair as he says, “I suppose I understand. Come, let’s spar.” 

_Just like that,_ she thinks as she wilts in relief and grabs her sword again, walking a few paces away. She watches as Dimitri carefully unbuckles his cloak and the outer layers of his day-to-day armor, until he’s left in a loose linen shirt tucked into his pants. _Just like that, he knows me_. 

She spent _months_ trying to get through to him when he was unhinged and wild, skulking in the pews of the monastery. She wasn’t enough then; she wonders if she is now.

Dimitri cards a hand through his bangs and pushes half of his hair off his face, tying it off with a hair tie, and her breath catches as she watches him search for a training lance. He looks younger like this, with his hair out of his way and his bulky outer layers shed. She wants to feel it under her own skin, wants physical proof that he’s here and he’s unharmed; that he’s not a thousand miles away, unreachable through some nightmare. 

She swallows back the thought and brings her sword up, narrowing her stance and shifting her weight as Dimitri comes back with a lance, stretching his arms and giving a few experimental swings. She’s always careful when sparring with Dimitri - he could crush her with just his bare hands if she makes a misstep that neither of them can predict - but she’s good, and they’re usually evenly matched.

There’s no teasing, no preamble as Dimitri lunges, but that’s always been their style. Felix and Sylvain spend more time riling each other up than actually sparring, and Ingrid spends half her time frowning and correcting her opponent’s stance. But Dimitri - he’s focused, determined in a way that leaves him unconsciously graceful when he’s spinning a lance through his hands. 

Byleth steps away, light on her feet, already compensating for his longer reach and taller stature by shifting and ducking just out of range, darting in and raining down a series of blows that Dimitri’s forced to counter at a closer range. He goes for her weaker side, and she slides across the floor, unwilling to let him gain any ground; a faint smile turns up the corners of his mouth as he’s forced to turn his head fully, compensating for the way she’s now on _his_ blind side. 

This is familiar; this is _thrilling_ . Sparring with Dimitri is a series of near misses, with one of them always pulling back just before they get too close. His lance whispers near her ear; the flat side of her sword brushes over his abdomen like the barest hint of a kiss. They don’t talk, but their eyes are trained on each other, their gazes dragging along each other’s bodies, reading each other, knowing, _understanding_. 

She doesn’t feel the pain in her hands anymore, or the uneasiness that sits just under her skin; instead, all she feels is the delight of adrenaline coursing through her veins, the feeling of being seen, the sheer joy of him - alive, in front of her, beads of sweat dripping down his face. She laughs a little, breathless, and his eyes crinkle at that, and his smile becomes wider now, even as he twists sinuously and slides his lance right up alongside her ribs, at the same time that her sword whistles sharply through the air and stops, skimming up right against the fragile tendons of his neck. 

She doesn’t breathe for a second, doesn’t do anything but live in that moment, burning it into her memory - Dimitri, his hair falling softly into his face, his gaze bright and filled with laughter, his lance clattering to the floor as he brings his hands up to span the space of her waist, murmuring in a low, dangerously amused voice, “I yield.” 

She reaches forward and thumbs a bead of sweat off of his temple. “Thank you,” she breathes out, and he smiles sweetly and steps away, busying himself with cleaning their space up.

She loves him. She doesn’t care anymore to think about why or how she’s given herself over like this; she just remembers the way her father once said, wildly drunk, _I loved your mother because when she looked at me I felt like the universe did something right when it put me together, if it meant that I got to be looked at like that_ and she gets it, she gets it, _oh_ how she gets it. 

.

Sometimes, she remembers it again, from time to time - that night of the ball, so long ago, when he’d brushed his hand across hers, so hesitant. They had been younger, and she had known then it was a bad idea because he was a prince, and she was a mercenary, and their futures had been separate, no matter how much Dimitri might have been convinced that he could keep her in Fhirdiad. Some things, she’d known, even kings couldn’t get.

But time makes fools of them all, and the person she is now is more hurt, more desperate, and more in love than the person she was all those years ago. She was asleep for five years, but she thinks that something in her caught up and changed in the same way that all of her friends did, the instant she saw the spires of Garrag Mach broken, the instant that something ugly and painful twisted its way into her chest and stayed there. 

This isn’t a story anymore that she can try to follow, line by line, looking for some clue that she’s doing things right. This is her, unbeating heart and all. This is her, looking at him, and knowing that she would follow him to the ends of the earth.

.

He finds her at the forward camp, the night before they plan on sacking Enbarr’s walls. She - along with the rest of the hand-picked strike force that will push to the center of the city - has been forcibly escorted to bed, with Seteth warning that they need to at least lie down, even if they don’t get any rest. 

Her tent is practically opulent by the standards from her teen years, growing up with Jeralt’s company, but she’s come a long way since then. Now, she sits on the edge of her bed and turns a ring over and over again, trying to remember how to breathe as she slowly tries to accept that she, or any one of her friends, may die tomorrow. 

There’s a rustling movement, and then Dimitri ducks through the flap of her tent, out of breath and panting slightly. He’s dressed down in a simple black tunic and trousers, the hood of an unfamiliar cloak draped over his blonde hair. His seldom-used sword is the only weapon he’s deigned to strap on. She stands up, quickly slipping the ring under the blankets of her bedroll, and feels oddly underdressed in her nightshirt and pants. 

“Is everything alright?” she asks, and Dimitri looks at her with a wide-eyed gaze as he drops the hood and runs a hand through his hair. 

“I just - had to see you,” he says. “I borrowed Dedue’s cloak to get past everyone. They wouldn’t stop - they all want to talk about tomorrow.” 

There’s a desperate quality to his words and to the way he’s stepping forward to meet her, as if in a daze. She frowns as she moves closer, eyes sweeping over the tense, white-knuckled grip he has on the pommel of his sword. He doesn’t look injured, or upset, but he’s coiled with energy, practically crackling with it. 

“What do you want to talk about?” she asks hesitantly. She reaches a hand out and wraps her fingers around his bicep, gentle as her thumb traces circles into the soft fabric of his shirt . “Are you alright?” 

He steps forward, and now he’s close enough that it would have been improper, if they hadn’t been building up to this for six long years. “You,” he tells her, like it’s nothing at all to admit it, like the simple word doesn’t set her blood burning. 

“Dimitri,” she says, voice hoarse. “Are you sure?” 

His fingers come up and tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear, and then he presses a finger into the soft skin under her chin and tips her head up, a smile quirking up the corners of his lips even as his other hand, shaking, comes to rest on her waist. 

“My beloved,” he says lowly, his voice like gravel, “I lived with ghosts for five years because I thought I had lost you. Whatever happens tomorrow, I will not live with ghosts for another five years, wondering what might have been.”

The words stun her, sweep her away with the raw, desperate intensity of them, and she thinks that she might live and die for the feeling that swamps her then in overwhelming tides - the thought that she wants to fall into Dimitri and never let go, that she _loves_ him and wants to be loved by him in return, that she wants to live through the parts of her life that are stained and dripping with blood only if it is by _his_ side, only if she is living it with _him_ \- 

He kisses her then, demanding and unyielding, like he’s afraid it might be the first and last time he gets to do it. It might very well be. She surges up against him, stands on the tips of her feet and trusts that his strong arms will keep her upright as she licks into his mouth and threads her fingers through his hair, undoing his eyepatch. He groans into her mouth, low and needy, and she nips at his lower lip in response, inexplicably feeling tears spring to her eyes. 

He pulls back, alarmed, the visible sliver of his mangled eye shining in the low light from the lanterns in her room. She commits the sight of him to her memory, tracing her gaze over the strong cheekbones and tired eyes, the proud nose and beginnings of stubble flecking his chin. 

“You cannot die tomorrow,” she tells him. 

“ _You_ cannot either - “

“No,” she shakes her head, desperate for him to understand. “You are to be the _king_ of this land, Dimitri. You cannot die tomorrow, or all that we have fought for is worth _nothing_.” 

He brushes away her tears with the pads of his thumb, frowning. “Why are you telling me this?” he asks slowly. 

She exhales hard, and her voice shakes as she says, “The last time I went into battle, I wasn’t ready to die.” 

Dimitri is quiet, staring at her, letting her gather her words. She’s so in love with him it hurts.

“I want to be ready this time,” she whispers. “I want you to know that if I fall - I am ready, and I will not linger, and I lo - “

He kisses her again, softer this time, but his grip on her waist is tighter, more bruising. She lets herself be kissed, goes soft and pliant under it and lets the frantic anticipation of battle bleed out into this, instead; the two of them, tangled up in each other, sharing breath on stolen time. 

“Please,” Dimitri says quietly as he draws back, his eyes shining wetly, “tell me those words tomorrow. When it is over.”

“When it’s over,” Byleth echoes back. She kisses him, kisses the bridge of his nose and then, feather-light, the skin of his bad eye. “When it’s over, I promise, but if I don’t - remember, I will not linger.” 

He lets out a shuddering breath. “Tomorrow,” he says, “I’ll be their king. Tomorrow, if you go, you will not join the ghosts that keep me company. Tomorrow. But tonight - can I stay with you?” 

“Yes,” she says. “Always.” 

.

There is a moment, breathless, in the space between exhaustion and terrifying, world-shattering fear - 

A moment where she sees Edelgard’s hands disappear into the folds of her cloak and she thinks of time and things coming full circle and daggers given between children that were pawns of some stupid, stupid political game - 

A moment where she thinks of the Edelgard she knew at the Academy, the leader that was always willing to do the dirty work to keep the people around her safe, and she remembers the look in Dimitri’s eye, the noble hurt, and she knows - 

She knows that Dimitri will not kill Edelgard just as surely as she knows that Edelgard knows the same - 

And the moment passes, eclipses the next; Edelgard slumps to the floor, Dimitri’s lance is dripping red, and it is over, it is over, it is over. 

.

She remembers all those times she’d wished, desperately, that he’d look away from the ghosts of his past, just once, to see her. _Look at me_ , she’d said, her voice shaking, and she’d thought he never had. _Look at me. Please let me be enough for you_.

Now they stand outside the castle at Enbarr, facing down a crowd of cheering soldiers on a blood-lined street. She sees their wyvern troops perched on top of crumbling houses, small fires still burning here and there, and she sees the missing gaps in the groups of pegasus knights circling the sky. Mercedes, Linhardt, and Marianne are conspicuously missing from their core team, because their real work starts now, creating miracles out of nothing in the healing tent. 

They stand together, and she feels helpless and small against the overwhelming finality of it all, until she turns, and sees that Dimitri’s blazing, burning gaze is on her. Here he stands, with his nation and soldiers in front of him, blood still trickling down his chest from the open wound in his armor; here they both stand, and he sees her. At long last, he sees her. 

_Oh_ , she thinks, because - maybe he always has. But she can see herself now too, reflected in his gaze, echoed back across all her students and _friends_ standing in front of her, waiting for her. Everything that she is - past and present, divine and mortal, bloodied and battered but still standing - she sees.

 _I am alive_ , she thinks giddily, and then Dimitri reaches for her hand as he walks forward. She laces their fingers together, and blinks back tears as she thinks _I am alive, and I am enough_.

 _I am enough_.

.


End file.
